Heraclitus is the first philosopher from whom we have a large collection of fragments, all likely pertaining to a book about which, nevertheless, we ignore many things(*). We have encountered him twice so far: First, when examining life’s autopoiesis (**). Secondly, when analysing the Greek gods in poetical perspective and the relation between the ephemeral…
Author: polymorph
On Abstract Music // Sofya
Abstraction is a mystery—a question mark, an opening to the unknown. Butoh, a contemporary avant-garde theatre-dance originated in Japan, is danced from a question mark, from the unexpected. Abstraction seems to me to be something similar when the mind alone is involved. Let’s take music. Music, like painting, can be both abstract and figurative; and…
Of Poetry, Gods, Heroes & Mortal Things // Carlos
The Greek gods are a matter of poetry. First, we know of them through the verses of various Ancient Greek poets; eventually poet-philosophers, but poets in any event. Secondly, their very presence – ultimately, their very being – makes sense in poetic terms alone. In other words: talking of the gods meant in Ancient Greece…
A Simplified World // Sofya
Hypercomplexity. It is hypercomplexity we are in need of in both ontological and epistemological terms—that is to say, in terms of our descriptions of what things are and of how we should study them. For we have lacked it for too many centuries, since Aristotle (and later Boethius, followed in this by the medieval Christian…
On Nishitani’s Notion of Nothingness (Sūnyatā) // S&C
Nishitani on Nothingness // Sofya What Keiji Nishitani intends to think in his famous essay Shūkyō to wa Nanika (What is Religion?), originally published in 1961 and translated into English in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness, is beautiful in a way. Firstly, he proposes that all life and non-life form oneself’s being. Nishitani quotes Miso Kokushi:…
Omar Khayam on Life and Love at the Antipodes of Hinduism and Buddhism // Carlos
This is a post on life and love as portrayed in the poetry of Omar Khayam; and, additionally, on a major difference between the spiritual worlds of Iran and India. Allow me to start by saying that, unlike many Westerners since Anquetil-Duperron had the Upanishads translated in the 18th century, I have never had the…
Little Stories from Malawi // S&C
We had a chance to visit Malawi in July 2019. We travelled there to learn about the environmental-justice initiatives put forward in various villages by the Lilongwe-based NGO Youth for Sustainable Development (YSD) over the past eight years—practices that have effectively enabled such villages to recover their pre-colonial agricultural practices and thereby strengthened their economic…
On Pasolini’s Medea // Carlos
There are – among others, to be sure – three fascinating things in Pasolini’s Medea, which I recommend you to watch here before reading this post. First, a necessary distinction between meaning and sense. Inevitably, one wanders about the specific meaning of certain issues: which are the phases of the human sacrifice offered in Colchis,…
Tragedy, Care, and the Good: A Post-Conventional Re-assessment of Plato // S&C
In Book VI of one of his most famous yet often misinterpreted dialogues, The Republic, Plato invites us to think on the conditions of possibility of living together. The expression “living together” is ours. Plato’s own is politike dynamis, which co-implies and thereby refers to three correlative things: the capacity of being together, the knowledge…
Technology & the Future // Carlos
Is modern technology inevitable? Does it represent an objective improvement of earlier forms of technology? Do different types of technology all fall under the same category? There are distinct types of technology, not only particular technologies falling under one and the same concept. Take an indigenous bow and a missile, for example. Putting them under…